Skip to content
Date updated: 17/05/2022

Describing the archive through the nose

Can you imagine the smell of thousands of documents and books stored in one room? Conservation Studio Manager, Caroline De Stefani writes about the smell of books and old documents, scientific research to identify the variety of odours, and the attempts of perfumiers to replicate the scents.

When I was asked to write a short article about the smell found in the archive, I was quite happy to oblige because I do like the smell of books and old documents.

It is not uncommon to hear visitors, archivists and conservators talking about the smell that hits their nostrils when handling archival documents. It is part of the experience as somehow it contributes to defining the documents’ history and preciousness.

Archival documents are made of organic materials which inevitably degrade. When they do, as well as showing their physical fragility, they also break down chemically and release volatile organic compounds which can be identified macroscopically through different smells.

Additional layers of aromas enrich the odour profile of the documents, for instance from external factors such as mould, and scents that were present in the environment in which the document was stored. Frequently books from churches still hold the smell of incense and sometimes items even retain the smell of cigarette smoke if previously owned by a heavy smoker. It is interesting what an item can tell about its history by its scent!

My initial enthusiasm to write up something cooled down as soon as I had to describe what my nose was perceiving when smelling old paper and degraded leather.

It is indeed very difficult to describe a scent, and this is probably because we are not paying as much attention to the sensations dictated by our nose as one would do when our eyes memorise an image. And yet, somehow we do store this information and very often we link a smell to an experience we had in the past and when we try to describe it, we tend to add information of that specific event that came up into our mind. I can give some examples to prove my point. I asked a couple of colleagues how they would describe the smell of parchment. The replies left me none the wiser. One said: “have you ever played the winding horn?” Erm… Unimpressed by my answer she went on to tell me that smell of the keratin of the horn reminds her of parchment. Another colleague told me that parchment makes her think of the fat on a cheap takeaway. The smell of parchment sends me back to a time in my childhood queuing with my mum at the local butcher’s shop. I’m pretty sure these descriptions are not telling you much on how parchment smells, quite the opposite!

In recent years, researchers from the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage have tried to identify scientifically the variety of odours that books and paper release by using an artificial nose. The results were quite interesting and as well as identifying the volatile organic compounds of some odours, they also provided examples of similar smells that people can relate to.

Here some examples:

  • Some books that were caught in a fire but left undamaged still hold the smell of a log fire. This odour is linked to the nonanal volatile organic compound
  • For some people paper decomposition has a sweet and almondy smell
  • The woody and earthy scent seems to be very common on papers that were produced from the 1850, this seems to be linked to the presence of lignin in the paper pulp; when it degrades it produces an organic acid called furfural which is also found on wood and soil

The bouquet of scents of old books is very difficult to describe, let alone to replicate.

People like the smell of documents and books so much that over the years it has inspired perfume makers to develop fragrances based on the selection of some odours found in archives and libraries.

For instance, in 2012 Wallpaper* collaborated with the perfumers Geza Schön and the house of Karl Lagerfeld to make a perfume with the scent of books. They produced a scent with woody notes but somehow and luckily didn’t reproduce exactly the complex and multi-layered smell of an old book.

LMA not only holds hundreds of years of documents, but also a wide range of odours from a great variety of materials.

  • Sometimes one can smell liquorice or burnt sugar in manuscripts, and this seems to be linked to the degradation of iron gall ink
  • The smell of the powdery degraded leather (commonly known as red rot) found on leather volumes reminds some of us of soil, dust, or cocoa with hints of iron
  • Fresh newspapers smell of petrol according to some people
  • Some types of coated papers have the pungent smell of cat pee, or to put it more elegantly of box plants or tomato leaves
  • The unfortunate storage in which some documents were kept can be disclosed by their musty and damp smell which is sometimes so bad it is almost like smelling mushrooms

Can you imagine the smell of thousands of documents and books stored in one room? The strong rooms in LMA do not have the same smell - some stores smell strongly of old wood with a hint of vanilla, while the air of other rooms is more acidic. One room, the cool store, has a strong smell of vinegar. This is because in this room we keep cellulose acetate films - these release acetic acid when they degrade, which is also found in vinegar. Some visitors say that even the conservation studio has a distinctive smell of chemicals, which is interesting for us conservators because we do not smell it anymore!

And there is more to smell in the archive, so next time you visit us tell us how you would describe the odours you have discovered while doing your research.